LOOKING FOR CLUES : CRIME EXHIBIT PUTS KIDS ON THE CASE.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

The children crept and crouched, snooped and searched along a dimly lit alley where the ``dead body'' was.

This was a murder scene and these sleuths from El Oro Way Elementary school in Granada Hills were pint-size Joe Fridays looking for clues around the victim - in reality, a Fiberglas mannequin.

``There's blood right there,'' declared 10-year-old Diana Hakopian, as her classmates scrambled about, finding tire tracks, a knife, white powder and other evidence.

Armed with clipboards and pencils, the 60 students used their observation skills Tuesday to traverse the mock crime scene, part of an interactive exhibit called ``Whodunit? The Science of Solving Crime'' at the California Museum of Science and Industry.

The traveling exhibit, developed by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, is on a seven-city national tour. The hands-on exhibit allows visitors to see how professionals investigate crimes using scientific techniques like DNA profiling and fingerprinting.

The museum invited the fifth-graders to attend the exhibit because its students had acquired forensic background through the school's mock crime scene program called ``Mystery Festival.''

The six-week program was created two years ago by fifth-grade teachers Enrique Villasenor and Vicki Woehrle, whose two classes attended the museum exhibit.

``What this does is it extends what we've done back at school,'' said Villasenor. ``They're applying their skills to another real-life situation and that's what learning is all about.

``They're arguing their points, trying to convince each other and they're working together to solve the crime.''

Sandwiched into the booths of the exhibit's 1950s-style Memory Diner, the San Fernando Valley students were the first to see the exhibit's live interactive skit put on by USC theater students disguised as detectives.

Aided by Fiberglas mannequins representing the diner's cook, the murder victim and police detectives, the actors taught the students how to hypothesize and interview witnesses.

Students also listened to a prerecorded, eyewitness account from the cook, who was robbed at gunpoint for cash, as well as a television news bulletin describing the crime.

After searching for clues in an alley where detectives had discovered a male victim who had been fatally shot, the fifth-graders headed to more than a dozen hands-on crime lab stations to piece the puzzle together.

There they matched the bullet found in the victim to the bullets found in the gun of one of the suspects.

They compared fingerprints left at the scene to those of the suspects, and they tried to create a suspect composite using the description given by the diner's cook.

``I loved this because when I'm home my sister gets into my stuff and I have to figure out who did it - usually it's her,'' said Diana. ``She takes my stuff and says it's hers and I have to prove it's mine. It's like a mini-case.''

By the end of the exhibit, most of the students had deduced who committed the crimes, some even sounded like detectives.

``It's Cary Canon,'' said 11-year-old Luis Cardona, mentioning one of the fictitious murder suspects. ``I went through all the lab stations and all the evidence pointed to Cary Canon.''

The exhibit, which is free to the public, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Live, interactive skits will be performed Saturdays, beginning this week. The exhibit is scheduled to run through Jan. 5.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- color) Students from El Oro Way Elementary t our a mock crime scene at the California Museum of Science and Industry.

(2) Timothy Chadwick, 10, examines the Forensic Entomology display during a museum trip Tuesday.

David Sprague/Daily News